Try, Try Again
by ylilnoissap
Summary: A botched suicide attempt leads to something much, much worse... ((one-piece))


Title: Try, Try Again  
Author: passionlily  
Year: Nondescript  
Rating: Pg-13 for attemped suicide, premeditation  
Disclaimer: Harry Potter © J.K. Rowling and Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic Press, October 1998.  
  
~ commencé ~  
  
With a toss of her fluffy cinnamon hair, Hermione Granger prepared to throw her life away into the murky, dirty water.  
  
Permanently.  
  
Hemione Granger had had enough torture for one lifetime.  
  
She was standing, legs bent as if a diver, on the raised edge of the black lake that lay before Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She gave the pool a cursory glance, then shut her eyes hurriedly. Cleared her mind. Prepared to die.  
  
Never before, throughout all the teasing from Malfoy, the Slytherins, Snape; never before had she considered taking her own life.  
  
It was not something that 'such a smart young girl' would ever think of doing.  
  
They would question, naturally, what had driven her to it. She would be famous, if only for a day, and then she would sink deep into the minds of her classmates, be forgotten.  
  
That was all she wanted, to be forgotten. To be left alone.  
  
Draco Malfoy had torn it today, laid the last straw on her delicate back. With his constant Mudblood remarks, his degrading manor, and his never-physical blows, he had drove her to it.  
  
She prayed to whatever god there might be, that Draco Malfoy would feel responsible for this.  
  
With a final check of the heavy trunk, brought out that afternoon and tied to her middle, she sucked in a final, purposeful breath, and pushed it off the edge.  
  
She felt the wonderful, jerking yank of the rope as it pulled the chest and her toward the water. Could imagine her body plunging down, down until it hit the muck-filled bottom and she was surrounded by staring mermen, with no notion of what she was attempting. Could almost see the wonderful, pressure-less grey of death...  
  
...and spit water out of her mouth as she popped back to the surface.  
  
Belatedly, she saw the trunk falling deeper and deeper into the filthy water, until it was lost to view forever. Ran the broken rope through her hands, and cursed it under her breath.  
  
As she swam to the shore, a surprisingly short distance away, she tried to picture what, god what, could have gone wrong. The rope had seemed sturdy enough, and...  
  
She stopped swimming for a moment, the water's edge a stroke and a hair away. Had she not, in anticipation of such a mishap, enchanted the line as so it could not be broken? Yes, she was certain she had, she could even remember the spell, 'hawser herculean'. So what had...?  
  
"Never mind," she whispered to the night. "I shall find another way."  
  
Her mindset was firm now, and she would not be swayed.  
  
******************************************************  
  
Though he looked concerned, Dobby ran to the kitchens to fetch her a knife. She had assured him - it was a knife for potions class; it was for homework; no, she was feeling fine. But she could read the fear in his eyes.  
  
She hardly realized that, had she been with Harry or Ron, she would have been mock 'voted out' of S.P.E.W. for this usage of a house elf. They wouldn't have known, though they're teasing mannerism was evident, how much their jokes at her expense. They didn't seem to grasp how much torment she went through any time she saw Ron's red hair bouncing with laughter, Harry's eyes gay and careless.  
  
But now, she wouldn't have cared if they had laughed at her 'till kingdom come.  
  
She was, of course, angry that her first attempt had turned out so badly. She had read about, researched death, and had decided that would be the easiest and least painful way. But, she supposed this would be quicker.  
  
Dobby entered the Gryffindor common rooms, holding the long bread knife she had requested and still looking nervous. After assuring him once more, he left the room with one last glance at her.  
  
"He doesn't know he will be the last to see me alive," she thought numbly, and tried to drive the thought from her mind.  
  
Clasping the knife with both hands, she held it high above her head, and with a single movement she plunged it towards her heart, seeing the ligaments and vessels explode in her mind.  
  
And she opened her eyes, still fully alive.  
  
Holding the hilt of a knife, the metal broken into pieces on the floor.  
  
She let out a cry, quiet and almost undetectable. "Foiled twice," she moaned. The common room door burst open, and Dobby scurried back in.  
  
"Is Hermoninny Granger not well?" he asked pointedly. He had, like Krum, never learned her name properly.   
  
And she could see that he thought that she had tried to hurt herself.  
  
'So that is why he waited outside,' she thought, almost giddily. 'He's worried. He's the only one who is, it seems.'  
  
For while her words had been loud enough to sound through a solid door, they had not, apparently, been enough to awaken any of the Gryffindors only a few feet away.  
  
She shook her head, and laughed almost wildly. "Yes, Dobby, I... I just foolishly broke this knife," she told the distressed house elf. 'Broke it on my chest,' she thought. Out loud, she raised her eyebrows thoughtfully and said, "Would you be so kind as to bring me another?"  
  
He stared at her anxiously, then bowed and exited.  
  
And the insanity of Hermione Granger was finally complete.  
  
********************************************************  
  
She prowled the halls, knife in hand, with a vengeance - looking for *that* room. It never seemed to be in the same place, not once. But it was the same room that another student, so long ago, had taken his own life.  
  
And the rope still hung there, so very useful to a tired and suicidal young girl like herself.  
  
She couldn't think straight anymore. Her mind had become as twisted as her hair itself, and that was a dangerous thing.  
  
She was numb. Numb as she past portrait after portrait, ghost after ghost. Numb as she bumped into Mrs. Norris and Filch, numb as he handed her a detention.  
  
But she was conscious enough to hear, as he noticed the knife in her hand, "What are you doing with that? Going to kill yourself or something?" Conscious enough to hear his dry chuckle, obviously considering his words a joke.  
  
Conscious enough to realize it when she made it to the Hangman's Room.  
  
She moved toward the rope in the center, letting the inky walls consume her. In a daze, she stuck her head through the rope, said the words that would yank it to the ceiling and bring this agony to it's end...  
  
And felt her head slip through the noose as it rose up.  
  
She cursed, this time in a voice loud enough to wake up all the Hogwarts students. She cried, then, at the pure agony of failure for once in her life.  
  
In a last burst of hope, she took the knife and brought it to her head. She could feel it just slide to the side, not even grazing her pearly white skull.  
  
She would not be killed, not tonight.  
  
What a curse this was! She could feel the crystalline tears running down her warm, living face as she walked from the room in a daze, still holding the accursed knife.   
  
Draco Malfoy slammed into her and yelped almost girlishly. He looked her over appraisingly, and she realized what he must see: a soaked, weeping Mudblood with nothing better to do than wander the halls at night.  
  
She knew because he told just her as much.  
  
"I suppose you were also the one who let out that raucous cry that woke me?" he questioned, rubbing a hand through his once unslick hair. She just nodded.  
  
"I should have expected as much, from a Mudblood. Your family was nothing, you are nothing. Absolute nihility."  
  
With this, he turned and flounced down the hall. With a look down at the knife in her hand, Hermione Granger was struck with a purely evil idea.  
  
"Malfoy, come back. I have something for you."  
  
There would be, at least, one death that night.  
  
And due to some foreign curse brought about by god-knows-what, it wouldn't be hers.  
  
~ fin ~  
  
AN: Odd, yes. Written at midnite? Yes. Due to be flamed? Yes. Go ahead, I expect it. It doesn't make much sense, this fic of mine. Ah, well. To Babylon by candlelight and back again, no?  
  
P.S: I read this over again in the morning, and I have no idea what "To Babylon by candlelight and back again" could mean. I'm the insane one, it seems.  
  
P.P.S: I just realized. ^-^;; Mother Goose. 


End file.
